"Vitals" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and Mr. Tutt exchanging meaningless remarks. The faces before him grinned and gibbered at him like a horde of monkeys. They had got him at last—all for a few pieces of rotten beef! That lean, hungry wolfhound would tear his tongue out by the roots if he even opened his mouth; claw wide open his vitals. And old Tutt was fixing him with the eye of a basilisk and slowly turning him to stone. Somebody sure had welshed! He had once been in a side show at Coney Island where the room simulated the motion of ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... without, but within and close by he seemed to catch a faint sighing, a faint sobbing rustle, a little stealthy creak—as though many persons were at his side, holding themselves quite still, and governing even their respiration with the extreme of slyness. The idea went to his vitals with a shock, and he faced about suddenly as if to defend his life. Then, for the first time, he became aware of a light about the level of his eyes and at some distance in the interior of the house—a vertical thread of light, widening toward the bottom, such as might escape between ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... known so slightly, measured so carelessly—oh, light, shallow heart!—had been rooted in his very vitals, had constrained him as a conqueror his captive, had been the very essence of the man until it spent itself on Alice Boswell's wild grave. He had come to her with a lie in his right hand, for he was bound and fettered in heart, or else but the blue, stiff ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... a king that is peaceful and a Brahmana that stirreth not out of home. O king, none can by nature be any person's foe. He is one's foe, and not anybody else, who hath common pursuits with one. He that from folly neglecteth a growing foe, hath his vitals cut off as by a disease that he cherished without treatment. A foe, however insignificant, if suffered to grow in prowess, swalloweth one like the white ants at the root of a tree eating off the tree ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... big official book through, and we understand what Thuggee was, what a bloody terror it was, what a desolating scourge it was. In 1830 the English found this cancerous organization imbedded in the vitals of the empire, doing its devastating work in secrecy, and assisted, protected, sheltered, and hidden by innumerable confederates —big and little native chiefs, customs officers, village officials, and native police, all ready to lie for it, and the mass of the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... need not stain our hands with innocent blood. If we but sit passive, and leave their fate to time, they will die away in discouragement and despair. Already disease is sapping their vitals. Like other weak races, they will vanish from the pathway of the strong, and there is no place for them to flee. When they go hence, it is to go forever. It is the law of life, which God has given to the earth. To coddle them, to delude them with ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... became bright, his lip intolerant, and Hugh was haunted by the text, "The zeal of Thine house hath ever eaten me." Maitland seemed to be literally devoured by an idea, which, like the fox in the old story of the Spartan boy, appeared to prey on his vitals. Hugh became gradually nettled by the argument, but he was no match for Maitland in scholastic disputation. Maitland felled his arguments with an armoury of texts, which he used like cudgels. Hugh at last said that what he thought was the weak ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... serpent; and probably signifies biting usury, so called perhaps because it resembled the bite of a serpent; for as this is often so small as to be scarcely perceptible at first, yet the venom soon spreads and diffuses itself till it reaches the vitals, so the increase of usury, which at first is not perceived, at length grows so much as to devour ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... day when he awoke again and hunger was gnawing his vitals; but the slow stupor was gone, he was himself again and the cramps had gone out of his limbs. He rose up luxuriously and cut a can of tomatoes, drinking the juice and eating the fruit, and then he lit a fire and boiled some strong ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... resolved themselves into a lump of chocolate out of one's haversack and a pull at one's water-bottle. The mess-president proved himself a man of resource on this trying occasion. With hunger gnawing at his vitals he saw a beautiful dinner laid out in a waiting-room for some staff officers. Unable to satisfy his comrades he saw no reason why he himself should go unsatisfied, and in the three or four minutes occupied by the engine in watering ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... which we notice this pamphlet, is, with a view to the proof of that large intestine mischief which still lingers behind in the vitals of the Scottish establishment. No proof, in a question of that nature, can be so showy and ostensive to a stranger, as that which is supplied by this vindictive pamphlet. For every past vote recording a scruple, is the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... might he not be driven by terror to make restitution? Therefore, although, obedient to the will of her master, she left the room in silence, she cast on the old man, as she turned away, a look, which, in spite of the wine he had drunk, and the wine he hoped to drink, he felt freeze his very vitals—a look it was of ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... results for the whole world. But what will happen if England bows before the worst and the stupidest bigotry the modern world can show? Not only will you strike a blow at Ireland and a blow at Irish-American sympathy, but a blow at the vitals of religion. ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... wakeful restlessness, I turn me, weary: while all around, All, all, save me, sink in forgetfulness, I only wake to watch the sickly taper that lights, Me to my tomb. Yes, 'tis the hand of death I feel press heavy on my vitals; Slow sapping the warm current of existence; My moments now are few! e'en now I feel the knife, the separating knife, divide The tender chords that tie my soul To earth. Yes, I must die, I feel that I must die And though ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... and sank back on the chair; and whether the poison had now reached to the vitals, or whether so unwonted a passion in so frail a frame sufficed for the death-stroke, Beck himself, with a low, suffocated cry, slid from the hand of Ardworth, and tottering a step or so, the blood ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... striking war. France therefore stood on the defensive; England was always the attacking party. On two sides, in Flanders and in Brittany, France had outposts which, if well defended, might long keep the English power away from her vitals. Unluckily for his side, Philip was harsh and raw, and threw these advantages away. In Flanders the repressive commercial policy of the Count, dictated from Paris, gave Edward the opportunity, in the end of 1337, ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre
... I want to make life pleasant. Every thing else is used up; why not try this, and make the most of my last chance? She does me good, and I don't seem to get tired of her. I can't have a long life, they tell me, nor an easy one, with the devil to pay with my vitals generally; so it would be a wise thing to provide myself with a good-tempered, faithful soul to take care of me. My fortune would pay for loss of time, and my death leave her a bonny widow. I won't be rash, but I ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... slave, Sway'd by your pleasure—when I forget it, May this keen dagger, which I mean to hide Deep in his bosom, pierce my vitals thro'. [Aside. ...
— The Prince of Parthia - A Tragedy • Thomas Godfrey
... meal with a dread she could not have expressed; she was so tired that she could scarcely stand; her back ached, and there was a strange pain pulling at her vitals. ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... a suit of greasy overalls, and went into the grimy vitals of the destroyer, a wrench in one hand, a chisel in the other. In about ten minutes he had solved the problem, explained it to the mechanics gathered about him, and then demonstrated just how simple the remedial measures were. All torpedo boat officers do this more often than not. It ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... a ship—and by ship I do not mean a bustling steam-packet or a floating hotel, but a ship to whose crew England stands for fresh food, women, wine, home.... Who that has so steered the course for England, does not feel a catch at his vitals on hearing the melody, at once plaintive ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... expenses, and the great falling off in the product of the free gifts, not only a momentary, but a total, want of money has taken place." This is the Paris upon whose nourishment, in the course of the last year, such immense sums, drawn from the vitals of all France, have been expended. As long as Paris stands in the place of ancient Rome, so long she will be maintained by the subject provinces. It is an evil inevitably attendant on the dominion of sovereign democratic republics. As it ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... apologise himself later on. For many minutes he harangued, and in the end the officer went away with his eyes glittering, but not too reluctantly. He knew that I could have killed him with my second chamber unless his first shot hit my vitals.... ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... His vitals were tortured by this problem. It was a claw within him sharper than the iron one; and as it tore him, the perspiration dripped down his tallow countenance and streaked his doublet. Ofttimes he drew his sleeve across his face, but there was no ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... lost. Indeed, she began to sink so soon as the torpedo exploded. The water poured into her vitals, and soon the crash of exploding boilers and the hiss of escaping steam added their ...
— A Little Traitor to the South - A War Time Comedy With a Tragic Interlude • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... a knight of knights, fearless, noble, open-hearted; such a one as any woman might well love. And he also loved Rosamund. Of this Godwin was sure. And, oh! did not Rosamund love Wulf? Bitter jealousy seized upon his vitals. Yes; even then and there, black envy got hold of Godwin, and rent him so sore that, cold as was the place, the sweat poured from ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... which has met with universal acceptance in the present day, tries to pass off the cult of collective selfishness as a moral duty, simply because that selfishness is gigantic in stature, it not only commits depredation, but attacks the very vitals of humanity. It unconsciously generates in people's minds an attitude of defiance against moral law. For men are taught by repeated devices the lesson that the Nation is greater than the people, while yet it scatters to the winds the moral ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... ** These vitals airs and sub-airs are forces which harmonize the interior man with his surroundings, by adjusting the relations of the body to external objects. They are the five allotropic modifications of ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... issue. Holding a microscope to the first-mentioned red ant, I saw that, though he was assiduously gnawing at the near fore-leg of his enemy, having severed his remaining feeler, his own breast was all torn away, exposing what vitals he had there to the jaws of the black warrior, whose breastplate was apparently too thick for him to pierce; and the dark carbuncles of the sufferer's eyes shone with ferocity such as war only could excite. They struggled half an hour longer under the tumbler, and when I looked again ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... are not alone, all the world can see us. A bad scrawl is so snug; it looks like PMD." Again: "I do not like women so much as I did. MD, you must know, are not women." "God Almighty preserve you both and make us happy together." "I say Amen with all my heart and vitals, that we may never be asunder ten days together while poor Presto lives." "Farewell, dearest beloved MD, and love poor, poor Presto, who has not had one happy day since he left ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... Joe Johnston. Now comes a game worthy of the immortal gods. It is played on bloody fields. The crafty antagonists grapple in every cunning of the art of war. Rivers of human blood make easy the way. The serpent of the Western army writhes itself into the vitals of the torn and bleeding South. Everywhere the resounding crash of arms. Alas, steadfast as Maxime Valois' nature may be, tried his courage as his own battle blade, the roar of battle from east to west tells him ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... bibliomania. But the development of the passion is not always marked by exhibitions of violence; sometimes, like the measles, it is slow and obstinate about "coming out," and in such cases applications should be resorted to for the purpose of diverting the malady from the vitals; otherwise ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... we heard every day on this very account. Sometimes a man or woman dropped down dead in the very markets; for many people that had the plague upon them knew nothing of it till the inward gangrene had affected their vitals, and they died in a few moments. This caused that many died frequently in that manner in the street suddenly, without any warning: others, perhaps, had time to go to the next bulk[133] or stall, or to any door or porch, and just sit down and die, ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... outer fringes of the ionosphere—that upper layer of rarified protons, the rapidly moving current of high velocity ions known as the plasmasphere—she bucked like a kicked horse. From deep within her vitals, the throb began, a strumming, thrumming sound with a somewhat higher note imposed upon it, making a sound like that of a bass viol being plucked rapidly on its ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... a mad dog, your most strenuous efforts will not bring desired results, and fatal disease may be clutching at your vitals. If a mad dog succeeds in biting you, it is a sign that you or some loved one is on the verge of insanity, and a deplorable tragedy ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... characters who had volunteered to help Mike and his gang win the status of spacemen by firing the Platform's rockets. There were not many of them, and they had lost heavily. They'd had thermite bombs to destroy the Platform's vitals. Ultimately the survivors talked freely, if morosely, and ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... eyes the conflict between death and life in the body of her father. The next day the doctor came again: M. d'Aubray was worse; the nausea had ceased, but the pains in the stomach were now more acute; a strange fire seemed to burn his vitals; and a treatment was ordered which necessitated his return to Paris. He was soon so weak that he thought it might be best to go only so far as Compiegne, but the marquise was so insistent as to the necessity for further and better advice than anything he could get ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... all got our vitals as protected as you have, Ed," replied the sheriff, scathingly. "What was you ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... that led to The Briers was an intoxicating joy. The wet earth, the drenched cedars, the oak buds, the spongy moss, the reddening blackberry-bushes, and the sprouting grain, all mingled in a queer creation odor that went right through the pores of my skin into my vitals and made me feel as strong as an ox, or rather, as Sam's new mule. I caught a glimpse of that mule through a vista before I came out of the lane, plodding along before Sam and the plow with a great splendid ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess
... is there Where bodies of matter, by some force stirred up, Through vitals and through joints, within their seats Quiver and quake inside, but soft delight, When they remove unto their place again: 'Tis thine to know the primal germs can be Assaulted by no pain, nor from themselves ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... by degrees, covered from head to foot with blisters. A telegram in the hall for Ulick, a hesitation in Ulick's voice, a sudden shifting of the eyes—anything sufficed—and therewith he was burnt to the bone, far beyond the bone, into the very vitals. Even now in his study, he waited another scalding. At any moment Ulick might come in, and though he never betrayed himself by any word or look, still his presence would suggest that he had just come from Evelyn. Perhaps ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... whole days amount To three score years and ten; And all beyond that short account Is sorrow toil and pain. Our vitals with laborious strife Bear up the crazy load, And drag these poor remains of life Along the ...
— Quaint Epitaphs • Various
... prosperous man. I saw the house and looked around in the park as I motored up with joy. And when I came to the big gate I wanted to give three cheers! I wish you had stock in the Meat Trust in America, that you could pierce your way like a microbe into the vitals, into the inside of the Meat Trust in my own country, make a stand in a Directors' Meeting for ninety million people over there, say your say for them, vote your stock for them, say how you want a Meat Trust you belong to, to behave, how you want it ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... Ha! live I may not, though I would For life give more than all; And die I dare not, though I should The world gain by my fall. 32. No, here he must no longer stay, He feels his life run out, His night is come, also the day That makes him fear and doubt. 33. He feels his very vitals die, All waxeth pale and wan; Nay, worse, he fears to misery He shortly must be gone. 34. Death doth already strike his heart With his most fearful sting Of guilt, which makes his conscience start, And quake at every thing. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Eugene, we find Valenciennes again playing a leading part. And during the last blind, desperate effort of France to shake off the domination of the scoundrels who had fastened themselves upon her vitals at Paris after the collapse of the monarchy, Valenciennes became the theatre of the tolerably well-conceived, but intolerably ill-executed, attempt of Dumouriez to make himself a French Duke of Albemarle. It was quite as unprincipled as his political operations were at Paris in 1792, ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... introduced him into your city, there are very few amongst you, I trust, who will not be convinced, that his partisans are well convinced that he will not support such a reform as shall give us a chance of destroying that corruption which is now eating out the very vitals of the country. ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... widely-spread reviews; statistical accounts have been watched over with the most careful surveillance. If the misrepresentations of the press could have altered the matter of fact, famine would not have been gnawing the vitals of Sutherland in every year just a little less abundant than its fellows, nor would the dejected and oppressed people be feeding their discontent, amid present misery, with the recollections of a ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... all glory, all climbing power, all vigor, tenacity of purpose, and granite strength of will concentrated within it, struck suddenly down, and falling backward in a collapse of which the thunder might shake the vitals of the earth, and you have this prostrate colossus. Even now one seems to hear it fall, to feel the warm soil trembling beneath one's feet as one approaches it. A row of statues of enormous size, with arms crossed as if in resignation, glowing ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... and crossbones underneath, and this motto, "Expiring in the hopes of a resurrection to life again." In one corner was a coffin, and the words, "The last remains of the Pennsylvania Journal, which departed this life the 31st of October, 1765, of a stamp in her vitals. Aged 23 years." The Pennsylvania Gazette, on November 7, the day of its first issue after the Stamp Act became law, published a half sheet, printed on one side, without any heading, and in its place the words, "No stamped paper to be had." During the next six months, every scrap of ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... call me a 'thing,' Eve Marsham," the other broke in with a laugh, "or we'll quarrel. I'm just a plain woman with sense enough to say nothing when Gay gets home with more whiskey aboard than is good for his vitals. And don't you think I'm not putting a good value on myself when I say that. Not that Gay's given to sousing a heap. No, he's a good feller, sure, an' wouldn't swap him for—for your Will—on'y when he snores. So you see it's a kindness to me ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... in my judgment of their offence. They deny the gods who preside over this nation, and have brought it up to its present height of power and fame. Their crime were less, I repeat, to deny the authority of Aurelian. This religion of the Galileans is a sore, eating into the vitals of an ancient and vigorous constitution, and must be cut away. The knife of the surgeon is what the evil cries out for and must have—else come universal rottenness and death. I mourn that from the ranks of the very fathers of the state, they have received an ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... downhill behind a muscular black man with feathers in his hair and bangles on his feet. Before she reached the station her veil and hair were in streamers, and her scalp was almost torn from her head, but the serpent jaune which had gnawed her vitals all night had ceased from troubling, and joy of living glowed in her once more. She could not help it; there was something in the air and the wind and the blaze of Africa that made for life, and thrust out despair. It swept away misery as the south-easter had swept ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... do I! But you have been faithful to your charge respecting this poor lady within, have you not, dame?" Bigot looked as if his eyes searched her very vitals. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... and steep slope dense thickets of wild bamboo grow, and a few stunted trees fill some of the less deep clefts, wherever the sunshine can penetrate. Splendid as is the scenery, its gloom, its stillness, its naked crags and peaks, its dark depths that seem to cleave to the very vitals of the earth, become so oppressive that, after a few days spent among them, the traveller is filled with repulsion and almost horror. Few living things have their home there. You might meet an occasional ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... the quiet hours, which she spent utterly alone, unable often to stir out of doors for many days together. The interests of the persons in her novels supplied the lack of interest in her own life; and Memory and Imagination found their appropriate work, and ceased to prey upon her vitals. But too frequently she could not write, could not see her people, nor hear them speak; a great mist of head-ache had blotted them out; ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... thing in the house to first one an' then the other. The first we noticed of it was him tellin' us how nice Miss Alviry thought his livers and gizzards was. Now, everybody knows thet they ain't been a chicken thet has died for our nourishment sence Sonny has cut his eye-teeth but has give up its vitals to him, an' give 'em willin'ly, they bein' the parts of his choice; an' it was discouragin', after killin' a useless number o' chickens to git enough to pack his little lunch-bucket, to have her eat 'em ...
— Sonny, A Christmas Guest • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... rushing into the very jaws of hell, with mines exploding all about her, solid shot and bursting shells tearing at her vitals, and a cloud of Mauser bullets buzzing like hornets across her deck. How she lived to get where she was wanted is a mystery; but she did, and they sunk her just inside the Estrella battery. At the last they could not steer her, because her rudder was knocked away. ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... youth; and death, when at length it came, approached like sleep, and gently closed the eyes. Prometheus (who represents the human race) effected some great change in the condition of his nature, and applied fire to culinary purposes. From this moment his vitals were devoured by the vulture of disease. It consumed his being in every shape of its loathsome and infinite variety, inducing the soul-quelling sinkings of premature and violent death. All vice arose from the ruin of ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... looked at the monster angrily lashing the water with its fins and flukes! The next instant we were beside the whale, and as it rolled on its side Captain Coffin transfixed him with a thrust of his lance that seemed to pierce his very vitals. The next moment the blood poured in gallons from his spout-holes. Having slackened the line from the boat, we rested on our oars at a safe distance and watched the monster circling around in ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... we halted; she loosed hold of me, and I tiptoed on alone. From within I heard the crash of one pot and then another on the brick floor of the kitchen, as the villain, searching for hidden money, smashed them to the ground. Bitten to the vitals by his want of success, he yelled, "I'll burn the sow's eye out! That'll open ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... splendour. Richard, if I thought that rending the bloody veil from my horrible fate could make thy proud heart stoop to the discipline of the church, I could find in my heart to tell thee a tale, which I have hitherto kept gnawing at my vitals in concealment, like the self-devoted youth of heathenesse. Listen, then, Richard, and may the grief and despair which cannot avail this wretched remnant of what was once a man be powerful as an example to so noble, yet so wild, a being as thou art! Yes—I will—I WILL tear open the long-hidden ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... multitude who watch, I hurl myself from this hideous place into the waters of the Nile. Yet ere I go to join dead Pharaoh, and side by side with him to lay our plaint against you before the eternal gods, listen to our curse upon you. From this day forward a snake shall prey upon your vitals, gnawing upwards to your heart. The spirits of Pharaoh and of all his servants whom you have slain shall haunt your sleep; never shall you know one more hour of happy rest. Through life henceforth you shall fly from a shadow, and if you climb a throne, it shall be such a one as ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard
... he said, "you're still hot with your own eloquence. Before you cool off, I want you to write that down word for word as you told it to me. If it twisted my very vitals, it will give a similar pleasure to others. 'Twould be selfish to deny them. When it's done, I'll send it to Tiebout. Now I'll leave you, and if my niggers are still too demoralized to cook supper for you, I'll do ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... you? It's the same reason that's been urging me to pick a quarrel with you so that I might have the satisfaction of slipping a couple of feet of steel into your vitals. When I accepted your commission, I was moved to think it might redeem me in the eyes of Miss Bishop—for whose sake, as you may have guessed, I took it. But I have discovered that such a thing is beyond accomplishment. I should have known it for a sick man's ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... bulwark and a nation's trust; and in the crowd around them there were a thousand thousand men as good, as game, as gritty, as they, for they were the children of the people, the men of the shop-counter, the men of the city office, the men of every artisan craft, the very vitals of London. They had sprung from the womb of the city, and the city could give birth to a ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... visiting every waggon-dwelling and cave-refuge, rating the inhabitants of some, dosing the occupants of others, emerging from three or four of the stuffy, ill-smelling places with a heavy frown that boded ill for somebody. For though Famine had not yet begun to gnaw the vitals of those immured in Gueldersdorp, Disease had here and there sprung into active, threatening, infectious being, menacing the crowded community with invisible, maleficent forces. Soon the hospitals were to be crowded to the doors, to remain crowded for many months to come; and the cry, "Room ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... peace can never be maintained except by a partnership of democratic nations. No autocratic Government could be trusted to keep faith within it or observe its covenants. It must be a league of honor, a partnership of opinion. Intrigue would eat its vitals away; the plottings of inner circles who could plan what they would and render account to no one would be a corruption seated at its very heart. Only free peoples can hold their purpose and their honor steady to a common end and prefer the interests of mankind to any narrow interest ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... he was cross-eyed behind. Besides, this here Burnett is a mountaineering gen'elman, and I mistrust not, he's been educated altogether on white moonshine licker fresh out of the still. When red licker, with some age behind it, takes holt of his abbreviated vitals he's shore going to wilt and wilt sudden ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... guiding star of your policy toward us. This grave question settled, the vast army of Negro leaders absorbed in the momentous work of adjusting this external problem, will be free to turn undivided attention to the curing of those ills that are gnawing at the vitals of ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... book of business "horse sense," containing 130 pages of boiled-down, successful, practical experience. It treats of the vitals of business—from the inside; of expense; fixed charges; overhead; buying; selling; advertising; credit; debt; employer and employee. It is suggestive, simple in language and systematic in arrangement. It embodies little theory but much tried-out truth. It has a real dollar-and-cent ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... eyes towards the approaching figure, and said in a broken voice, and with long pauses between: 'Comrade, there is a cold Swedish bullet rankling in my vitals. Promise me, old friend, that I shall have an honourable burial; not in this shabby miner's dress, but in my new uniform. And when they lay me in my last resting-place, let the lads say: "A good ...
— The Young Carpenters of Freiberg - A Tale of the Thirty Years' War • Anonymous
... should falter now? 'New occasions teach new duties.' Let us not be satisfied with a supetficial view. While fresh loam is being scattered on the surface, commercial interests and the suburban greed to get home quick are striking at the vitals of the ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... and bayonet," said Peter. "We both saw it, but didn't speak until now. He was churning the bayonet around in the great paunch as if feeling for the vitals. The ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... scratch like a man, though, and sent one of his ponderous fists crashing through his opponent's ribs and in among his vitals, and instantly afterward he hauled out poor Stanford's left lung and smacked him in ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... years from that time he was a corpse. As I write these lines, I learn with ill-concealed pleasure that he is still a corpse. An awful dispensation of Providence, in the shape of a large, wilted cucumber, laid hold upon his vitals and cursed him with an inward pain. He has since had the opportunity, by actual personal observation, to see whether the statements by me relating to astronomy were true. His last words were: "Friends, Romans and countrymen, beware of the q-cumber. ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... as bad—as all that—money?" questioned Mr. Vandeford. "You'll have to show me," he added calmly, though in the vitals of his heart he was relieved that Howard still spoke of "The Purple Slipper" as a carcass ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... maddening if we did not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. The knowledge that we cannot recall one lost day, nor alter one past page in our life's story, would bring a remorse cruel as the fabled vulture which ever fed upon the vitals of the chained Prometheus. But thanks be to God, Jesus says, "He that sitteth upon the throne saith, Behold, I make all things new." Dear brothers and sisters, some of us need to turn over a new leaf, to make a fresh start, how shall we do it? Let us take our secret sin, ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... down the street playing 'The Girl I Left Behind Me,' so 'tis said, in glorious notes of triumph. Every looker-on's inside shook with the blows of the great drum to his deepest vitals, and there was not a dry eye throughout the town among the public-house people and the ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... the anomalous and unaccountable position which she had taken up. The imperial government considered it had now a clear view of her case, and its orders were distinct and peremptory. Christianity was to cease to be. It was a subtle foe, sapping the vitals of the state. Rome must perish, or this illegal association. Such evasions as Callista had used were but instances of its craft. Its treason lay, not in its being Christianity, but in its not sacrificing to the gods of Rome. Callista was but throwing dust in their eyes. ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... or family. To all which I do most solemnly and sincerely promise and swear, without the least hesitation, mental reservation, or self-evasion of mind in me whatever; binding myself under no less penalty than to have my left breast torn open, and my heart and vitals taken from thence and thrown over my left shoulder, and carried into the valley of Jehosaphat, there to become a prey to the wild beasts of the fields, and vultures of the air, if ever I should prove wilfully ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... fast tied,—and he would have accepted it, excused her almost, admitted that it had been his business to mind better what he was about. But she had tortured him through the poor little irrecoverable son whom he had never seen, through the heart and the vitals that she had not herself, and that he had to have, poor wretch, ...
— Georgina's Reasons • Henry James
... vale of years beneath, A grisly troop are seen, The painful family of Death, More hideous than their queen: This racks the joints, this fires the veins, That every labouring sinew strains, Those in the deeper vitals rage; Lo! Poverty, to fill the band, That numbs the soul with icy ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... safe as I lookt down upon the falling of the Rock. And behold! the Great Rock smote the Monster in the humpt part of the back, below of the head, and did enter into the Monster, even as a bullet doth strike, and was gone instant from my sight into the Vitals. ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... suspended. He rubbed the palms of her hands, he covered her delicate feet with his coat, and then rushing up the bank into the road, he shouted with frantic cries on all sides. No one came, no one was near. Again, with a cry of fearful anguish, he shouted as if an hyena were feeding on his vitals. No sound; no answer. The nearest cottage was above a mile off. He dared not leave her. Again he rushed down to the water-side. Her eyes were still open, still fixed. Her mouth also was no longer closed. Her hand was stiff, her heart had ceased to beat. He tried with the warmth of his own body ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... wild beasts of the most ferocious character, which were not there, and imagined them grinding their teeth in anxiety to devour him; he alternately yelled and whispered that rats, weasels and wild cats were crawling over his body and gnawing at his vitals. In the paroxysm of frenzy he lay down on the cabin floor and tried to bury his head from the sight of the demons that he imagined pursued him. He cried out in pitiful accents to be shielded from them, and in the effort lost complete capacity for coherent speech. The crew ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... tortured limbs writhe, and the blackening cuticle emits a nauseous steam! The black blood oozing from her nostrils proclaims how terrible the inward struggle. The whole frame bends and shrinks, and warps like a fragment of leather thrown into a furnace—the flame has reached her vitals—at last, by ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... from thirty to fifty pounds. Until the middle of the eighteenth century horses had not become very common among them, and the old Indian used to laugh at the white man, so lazy that he could not walk. A consuming fire was preying on the vitals of an ancient simple people. Unscrupulous traders, who boasted that they made a thousand per cent, held them in the most abject thrall. It has been carefully computed that these hunters worked, on an average, for ten cents a day. The power of their old village chiefs grow ...
— Se-Quo-Yah; from Harper's New Monthly, V. 41, 1870 • Unknown
... that come into the world with what your canting fools call a mission; and his mission is to take care of number one. Not dishonestly, mind you, nor violently, nor rudely, but doucely and calmly. The care a brute like me takes of his vitals, that care Lusignan takes of his outer cuticle. His number one is a sensitive plant. No scenes, no noise; nothing painful—by-the-by, the little creature that writes in the papers, and calls calamities PAINFUL, is of Lusignan's breed. Out to-day! of course he was out, ma'am: he knew ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... last, bitter days. In reality she was now in the first stage of starvation, experiencing the first, vague hallucinations, the sense of incorporeality, the ever-declining strength, the constant yearning that is nothing but the vitals' submerged demand for food. The contents of the kyack meant life to herself and to Ben,—deliverance and safety when ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... conception of how to do it. Also she rolls her "rs"; and if the Mystery had heard himself alluded to by her as a "pr-r-opoganda" he would never have forgotten it. As for Mrs. Shuster—she mightn't have minded the Maxim gun of that long-drawn "d-r-r-readful!" but her very vitals would have melted over the "old lady." Despite her largeness and oddness of appearance generally, she considers herself a young widow, with a personal fascination beyond that of her banking account. I, with the mellow leniency ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... system, national and State, we have shunned all the defects which unceasingly preyed on the vitals and destroyed the ancient Republics. In them there were distinct orders, a nobility and a people, or the people governed in one assembly. Thus, in the one instance there was a perpetual conflict between the orders in society for the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 2: James Monroe • James D. Richardson
... of the South Sea Belle, believing the creature had died of the disease supposedly caused by the growth of the ambergris in its intestines, had insisted upon boarding the carcass. Driving away the clamorous and ravenous sea fowl, he had dug down with his blubber-spade into the vitals of the whale and recovered the gray, spongy, ill-smelling mass which was worth so great a sum ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... if that selectman occasionally has remorse now about that pie; dreams, perhaps, that it is buttoned up under his jacket and sticking to him like a breastplate; that it lies upon his stomach like a round and red-hot nightmare, eating into his vitals. Perhaps not. It is difficult to say exactly what was the sin of stealing that kind of pie, especially if the one who stole it ate it. It could have been used for the game of pitching quoits, and a pair of them would have made very fair wheels for the dog-cart. And yet it is probably as wrong ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... story of Prometheus chain'd? The vulture—the inexhaustible repast Drawn from his vitals? Say what meant the woes By Tantalus entail'd upon his race, And the dark sorrows of the line of Thebes? Fictions in form, but in their substance truths— Tremendous truths!—familiar to the men Of long past times; nor obsolete ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... fair champion's feet. Nevertheless, we could not help knowing in our hearts that no normal girl could help preferring that celestial peacock to our grey hen, and that Miss Destrey's wish to be kind must have outstripped her obligation to be truthful. This knowledge was turning a screw round in our vitals, when His Highness himself appeared to give it ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... never slackening his racing speed; but, turning in the saddle and glancing back, I saw, just back of the cantle, just to the right of the spine in the glossy brown back, that one tiny, grimy, powder-stained hole. I knew the deadly bullet had ranged downward through his very vitals. I knew that Van had run his last race, was even now rushing toward a goal he would never reach. Fast as he might fly, he could not leave ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... earth than be forced to submit to these endearments in my and other people's presence. Nevertheless she submits, with a forced smile. I smile too, but as a diversion I mentally plunge my hands into my vitals and tear them to pieces. At times the thought crosses my mind that this priestess of Diana is more at ease and less reticent when alone with her husband. But I do not often indulge in thoughts like these, for I feel that one drop more and I shall ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... cook grunted, irritated by Blodgett's free use of the word "nigger," "and Ah's tellin' you he'll have a Malay kris what'll slit yo' vitals and chop off yo' head; and nex' time when you gwine come to say howdy, you'll find yo' ol' skull a-setting in de temple, chockfull of dem rubies and grinnin' like he was glad to see you back again. Ah ain't gwine on no such promulgation, ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... promise is easy and to keep that promise is often hard, as Shadrach observed when he and Zoeth were alone in the sitting-room that evening. "I feel as if the whole vitals of this place had gone away on that afternoon train," the Captain admitted. "And yet I know it's awful foolish, 'cause she'll only be gone ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... pride, cannot forego the wonderful conveniences of the "iron road and the fire-carriage"; but in order to avail himself of them, he must sit an hour at a time cheek by jowl with a low-caste—it may be a Pariah—fellow-passenger. The railroad gnaws at the vitals of ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... the earth, shades of some army cut down in swathes and pitted in the fashion of the Cornal's bloodiest stories. And now they were the foreign invader, dumb because they did not know the native language, pitying this doomed community but moving in to strike it at the vitals. ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... able muscles, steady nerves (and let us remember that nerves depend for their tone on the muscular condition), a clean skin open at all its pores and doing its eliminative work thoroughly, and clean strong vitals make up the kind of beauty within the reach of all womanhood, and the physical beauty which she should most desire. The day is coming when our ideal of what is physically perfect—not spiritually, for Christianity has carried us beyond anything ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... shoulders above him in hands that looked like a tangle of baked nerves, and shook them vigorously. "You are a great boy!" he said with a sort of quizzical solemnity. "A great boy. This damned, God-forsaken, pestilential, demoralizing, brutalizing factory for enriching a few with the very life blood and vitals of thousands that will suffer and starve and never be heard of" (all his language cannot be recorded), "will make two or three reputations by the way. Mine will be one, although I'll get nothing else. Shelikov is safe; but you will have a monument. Well, God bless you. I grudge you nothing. ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... the stratified envelope of rocks nearly 6 miles above sea-level.... The higher you get up ... the rougher and more difficult becomes the climbing; the valleys are deeper and more cut into ravines, the rocks more fantastically and rudely torn asunder, and the very vitals of the earth exposed; while the heights above tower to the skies. The torrents rushing from under the glaciers which flow from the snow-clad summits roar and foam, eating their way ever into the ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... when Orpheus, trying to rescue Eurydice from "the infernal regions," interrupts with "his harmonious strains" the tortures of eternal punishment, Prometheus did not doubtless show as much delight as he ought to have done, on discovering that the beak of the vulture was no longer gnawing at his vitals, "scarcely daring to believe in such good fortune." Orpheus is the Commune; Eurydice, Liberty; "the infernal regions," the Government of the 4th September; "the harmonious strains," the decrees of the Commune; Prometheus, the tenant; and ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... better to give our heads to the men of Falifa than for us to go into the belly of the shark,' he said, 'and it may be we can land, and they see us not.' And so with fear gnawing at their vitals the canoe flew along, and the streak of fire underneath was close upon them when they struck the edge of the coral ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... himself for that dreadful punishment to which he was sentenced. He suffered it in its full severity: the wind, which was violent, blew the flame of the reeds from his body: the fagots were green, and did not kindle easily: all his lower parts were consumed before his vitals were attacked: one of his hands dropped off: with the other he continued to beat his breast: he was heard to pray, and to exhort the people; till his tongue, swollen with the violence of his agony, could no longer permit ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... is always the mate par excellence—soon got fast to a huge bull-whale who, when he felt the deadly harpoon in his vitals, swiftly turned and struck the whale-boat a terrific blow with his tail, smashing it into kindling wood and hurling the men in every direction. After that {232} splendid exhibition of power, he got away scot-free save for the rankling iron and the dangling line which he took with him. ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... the room below, and on his master's bed with a spring and a great cry of triumph, rabbit and all. But his master was not there; he had been gone since early fall and it was now February. He would not return until spring, for he was an old man, and the cruel cold of the mountains clutched at his vitals like a panther, and he had gone to the village to winter. The Cat had known for a long time that his master was gone, but his reasoning was always sequential and circuitous; always for him what had been ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... he was up again, and his long arms were waving fiercely. "By the Eyes of God! They shall have cause to cage me. If I am to be horned like a bull, I'll use those same horns. I'll gore their vitals. O madam, since of your wantonness you inclined to harlotry, you should have wedded another than ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini |
